The aquapelago and the estuarine city: reflections on Manhattan

: Over the last decade there have been a number of attempts to both imagine Manhattan’s pre-colonial past and to envisage new ways in which the metropolitan island (and the greater New York area) might more productively relate to its location within a major estuarine environment. Rising sea levels associated with global warming have given a particular focus, not to say sense of urgency, to this enterprise. This essay reviews several of the aforementioned projects and discusses their conceptual parameters with reference to recent debates in Island Studies concerning the concept of the aquapelago. Consideration is given to aspects of the cultural imagination of place and conceptions of the integration of human/urban and natural ecosystems. Drawing on these discussions, the essay outlines the manner in which established analyses of aquapelagic assemblages can be expanded to embrace metropolitan island environments.